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As I've said before, HS2 is largely on the same template as high-speed trains in Europe, whose remit is basically to facilitate business travel.
This really isn't true. HS2 is quite different to grand rail projets on the continent (which largely compete with/are designed to take business from airlines) in that one of the main reasons for building it is to create capacity for more local services by moving long distance services onto the new line. See:
https://www.globalrailwayreview.com/news/89694/hs2-capacity-britains-existing-rail/
But also:
https://www.railtech.com/infrastructure/2020/07/21/hs2-will-unlock-capacity-of-three-mainlines-in-uk/
https://www.railengineer.co.uk/the-capacity-benefits-of-hs2/
https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2019/10/02/more-evidence-that-hs2-is-more-about-capacity-than-speed/The UK has a huge capacity problem and it sure ain't a myth. We have a railway network which is - unlike just about all other countries, because we invented it - fundamentally Victorian. Because of this the carriages have to be narrower, stations have shorter platforms (unless they've been extended), infrastructure is very outdated. We also spent years not spending any money on maintaining it. And so on. And on top of this there has been huge passenger growth in recent years without any significant capacity growth.
Sure, you could fix this by completely revamping the current network - extending station platforms, replacing bridges and tunnels, lengthening trains, replacing signalling and other infrastructure. But it would take years and years and years of disruption to rail users, cost a fortune and - given the UK's track record for upgrade projects - possibly not even work properly at the end of it.
In short: it would be completely unworkable.
Fox-
Sure, you could fix this by completely revamping the current network - extending station platforms, replacing bridges and tunnels, lengthening trains, replacing signalling and other infrastructure. But it would take years and years and years of disruption to rail users, cost a fortune and - given the UK's track record for upgrade projects - possibly not even work properly at the end of it.
It could be done. The CFF/SBB upgraded the Simplon line to take double-decker trains to increase capacity. It was a massive job, including increasing the height of the 489m long tunnel at St Maurice, increasing the height of the Simplon tunnel by lowering the rail bed, and raising various bridges, including the one at Vevey. Took 10 years or so, but the disruption was minimal, and the works on the St Maurice tunnel came in 11% under budget and ahead of schedule. I do sometimes wonder whether, if the government is going to out-source the running of the UK's rail network, they wouldn't be better off just sub-contracting the entire thing to the SBB/CFF and letting them get on with it.
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Oh, but it was.
At some of the first public meetings for HS2 in LB Hillingdon,
the only people wearing HS2 badges were economists standing next to display boards proclaiming that Birmingham and Manchester would be just XY minutes from Heathrow airport.
Ever since the French TGV outcompeted the airlink between Paris & Lyon, 'high speed' boosters have claimed that their vision of the future would free up landing slots at Heathrow.
Lord Adonis and his HS2 crew followed on from chancers in the 90s claiming they would restart the Grand Central Railway. This lot ran out of parliamentary time, showing Adonis what pitfalls to avoid.
HACAN showed that the number of internal flights fro manchester and Birmingham to Heathrow had been falling for years, [partly because BA had reduced its feeder flights,
and because few regional airlines could afford to maintain Heathrow landing slots].
The original plans for HS2 showed a spur at ground level roughly from Harefield running down through Uxbridge, (following a long defunct freight line), roughly following the River Colne.
It was as though an intern had been tasked with drawing up the route for HS2,
and they were scared to point out the only maps they could find dated from about the 1930s.When it was pointed out to HS2 that a considerable amount of suburban housing and infrastructure had been built along the proposed route, the obvious suggestion was to build a tunnel ... through the gravel for which the Colne Valley is famous.
It's possible, just more expensive than tunneling through London Clay, which is all the new generation of tunnellers have experience of.
When HS2 again changed 'Boss', the Heathrow Spur was just dropped, negating it's original selling point.
Brommers
mespilus
As I've said before, HS2 is largely on the same template as high-speed trains in Europe, whose remit is basically to facilitate business travel. Obviously, it also facilitates travel between larger centres for other people wealthy enough to afford the higher fares, while typically having a negative impact on the rest of the rail network, when it is far, far more important, and far cheaper, to reinstate lost railway lines and create other useful local-ish rail links. Also important are sensible main line upgrades, of course, but HS2 isn't a strategic priority by any stretch of the imagination.